BCA appoints new Trustees
Top (from l to r) Sharmaine Lovegrove, Caroline Hussey-Bain, Katie Dash, Olakunle Babarinde
Bottom (from l to r) Harun Morrison, Jennie Baptise, Adam Crymble, Rukayah Sarumi
Black Cultural Archives is pleased to announce that eight new Trustees have been appointed to our Board of Directors. The group who come from a range of backgrounds, including publishing, the arts, academia and finance, will be an integral part of shaping the future of BCA.
The new additions, who started this month, will work alongside BCA’s Managing Director, Arike Oke, who herself recently started her post at BCA in March earlier this year. The new Board Members are as follows:
Olakunle ‘Kunle’ Babarinde | VP, Trading Solutions EMEA at Interactive Data
An international property investor, an accredited UK landlord and property developer as well as a mentor to young entrepreneurs, Olakunle has been nominated as Board Secretary and also serves as Trustee of two other charities: Making The Leap, sitting on the Property Strategy committee and St John’s Notting-Hill, representing it on the Kensington Deanery Synod. He is also founder of Talent Rising, a resource for Employee Network leaders.
Olakunle has a degree in Physics and a post Graduate diploma in Management in Industry, a foundation to his almost 30 years in financial services. Olakunle is a strategic thinker and experienced negotiator, having worked with hundreds of organisations to deliver strategic income generation and business development through periods of challenging organisational change.
Jennie Baptiste | Photographer
Jennie Baptiste is a London born photographer of St Lucian heritage. Her work is primarily based around Youth Culture, Music, and Heritage within Portraiture. Jennie’s work has been shown at notable institutions including The National Portrait Gallery, The V & A Museum, The Museum of London, The Institute of Jamaica, Rush Arts Gallery in New York, Anti-Slavery International and The Home Office.
Adam Crymble | Senior Lecturer of History at the University of Hertfordshire
Dr Adam Crymble is a Senior Lecturer of History at the University of Hertfordshire. He teaches and researches migration history in Britain. He is passionate about widening participation in education, and on promoting digital skills development in the heritage sector. He is a founding editor of the Programming Historian, a free digital learning resource used by more than 1-million people per year.
Katie Dash | Senior Associate Director at the Confederation of British Industry
Katie is a Senior Associate Director at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and is responsible for representing businesses across London and the South East and helping them navigate the political and economic landscape. Her previous experience includes Assistant Regional Director for CBI Scotland, Assistant Economist for the Scottish Government, and research roles in think-tanks based in London. Katie is also Co-Chair of CBI’s Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) Network.
Caroline Hussey-Bain |Tate Patrons Manager
Caroline Hussey-Bain (b. 1984, Northampton, UK) has been an Art, and Heritage sector working with British, European and International based Major Donors for over Fifteen years. She has worked with small independent and private galleries to large national institutions including Royal Museums Greenwich and Tate. As a 2014 Winston Churchill Fellow, she worked extensively in North America including at the Brooklyn Museum, MoCADA and Mystic Seaport researching best practice in fundraising and relationship management. In 2016, she became a Museum Association Transformer for her leadership in devising new strategies to diversify the individuals who support art institutions and in 2019 became a Clore Fellow.
Sharmaine Lovegrove | Publisher of Dialogue Books
Sharmaine Lovegrove is the Publisher of Dialogue Books, the UK’s only inclusive imprint, part of Little Brown Book Group and Hachette UK. She is inspired by innovative storytelling, and has worked in public relations, bookselling, events management and TV scouting. She was the literary editor of ELLE and set up her own bookshop and creative agency when living in Berlin.
Harun Morrison | Artist
Morrison is an artist and writer currently based in London, raised in Streatham. Alongside Helen Walker, he co-founded the collective art practice ‘They Are Here’ in 2006. Through this collaboration they continuously explore group dynamics, divisions of authorship and politics of time and space.
Rukayah Sarumi | Sustainable Development Professional
Rukayah is a public policy expert with over a decade of experience in the field of sustainable development with a focus on child rights and environmental sustainability. Rukayah has committed considerable time to community cohesion and has worked as a community organiser in Lambeth on issues related to security and safety. Rukayah possesses strong governance experience through her role as a non-executive director and advisory board member on national and international boards.
Dawn Hill, BCA’s Chair of the Board stated: “I'm pleased to welcome such a group of dynamic, visionary and accomplished new additions to the Board of Trustees. I would also like to thank our previous Trustees for their incredible hard work, commitment and continued support of BCA.
As we look towards a future of sustainability, I'm confident that these new additions to the Board alongside Arike Oke and the entire BCA team will continue to make great strides in accomplishing Len Garrison's dream: a place that is the home and a beacon for Black British history - past, present and future.”
Arike Oke added “I am excited to work with our new trustees, who bring such a diversity of skills, in taking Black Cultural Archives forward together into a thriving future.”
They join existing Board Members Dawn Hill (Chair), Okao Angole, Professor Hakim Adi, Maureen Roberts, Stafford Geohagen, Cllr. Jacqui Dyer and Cllr. Sonia Winifred.
You can find a full list of BCA Board Members on the People section of the About Us page.